Hillary Clinton?셲 Attack on Wells Fargo Fits a Pattern

Hillary Clinton continues demonstrating an unusual willingness to call out corporate bad actors by name, even as she courts big business support for her campaign.

The latest came Tuesday, when the Democratic presidential nominee posted an open letter to Wells Fargo customers, castigating the bank?봞nd its leadership?봣or signing up millions of customers for online services they never requested.

The letter was timed to coincide with an appearance by Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf before the Senate Banking Committee, his first Congressional testimony since the scandal erupted. ?쏦e owes all of you a clear explanation as to how this happened under his watch,??Clinton wrote. ?쏷here is simply no place for this kind of outrageous behavior in America.??/p>

Clinton?셲 outspokenness fits a pattern the candidate has established over the course of her run: When a company make headlines for abusive practices, even if the story is relegated to the business pages, she calls them out by name?봲omething presidential candidates have rarely done.

She?셲 been at it since launching her bid. In a major economic address last July, she catalogued ?쐓hocking??stories of financial industry malfeasance, denouncing HSBC for “allowing drug cartels to launder money” and the banks embroiled in the Libor Scandal. “There can be no justification or tolerance for this kind of criminal behavior,??she said, promising to prosecute individual executives. On several occasions, she?셲 laced into former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli?봳his season?셲 poster boy for C-suite greed?봮ver predatory pricing, at one rally calling him the ?쐏ersonification of the worst blind date that anybody in this audience has ever had.??Clinton has likewise name-checked Valeant Pharmaceuticals and, most recently, EpiPen maker Mylan Pharmaceuticals for jacking up their prices, pointing to her plan to force drugmakers to explain such increases.

And those weren’t the only corporate targets. The Democrat has also condemned companies seeking to shift their headquarters or operations abroad as a cost-cutting maneuver. Last December, she slammed Pfizer for its proposed merger with Allergan, a since-abandoned deal that would?셶e enabled the company to relocate to low-tax Ireland. Ditto for Johnson Controls, an auto parts maker that sought federal bailout money during the financial crisis then pursued a tie-up with Tyco to move to Ireland. ?쏯ow, under the law, they call this an inversion,??Clinton told a New Hampshire crowd in February. ?쏧 call it a perversion, and I?셫 going after it.??This spring, she called out Carrier Corp. and Nabisco for announced plans to shut down U.S. operations and move them to locales with cheaper labor. ?쏧f a company like Nabisco outsources and ships jobs overseas, we?셪l make you give back the tax breaks you received here in America,??she said in a March speech on the economy in Detroit. ?쏧f you aren?셳 going to invest in us, why should taxpayers invest in you???/p>

The campaign frames the tactic as part of a broader strategy to feature corporate do-gooders?봳hose already engaged in profit-sharing with workers or environmental stewardship, for example?봶hile applying some heat to bad actors. That is to say, Clinton isn?셳 hostile to big business but also won?셳 refrain from criticizing specific examples of what she sees as wrongdoing.

But it’s also a testament to an odd political moment, in which both parties are struggling to wrangle newly assertive populist energy from their bases. In the case of Wells Fargo, Clinton noted that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency Republicans remain keen to curb or dismantle, secured most of the $185 million fine slapped on the bank. She pledged to defend it; to hold executives accountable for misconduct on their watch; and to break up any financial institution that proves ?쐔oo big to manage.??But that looked like a gentle knuckle-wrapping next to what Stumpf faced in the Banking Committee hearing from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The liberal powerhouse excoriated Stumpf for ?쐅utless leadership;??accused him of compelling his employees to cheat customers so he could put ?쐆undreds of millions of dollars??in his own pocket; and told him he should resign and be ?쐁riminally investigated by both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.??/p>

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has taken on many of the same companies that Clinton has criticized, in arguably more memorable fashion. The Republican nominee called Pfizer?셲 proposed inversion ?쐂isgusting.??When Nabisco announced plans to move some operations to Mexico, he pledged to swear off Oreos. And he spent months inveighing against Carrier?셲 decision to move manufacturing jobs to Mexico. ?쏧 wanna do the number on Carrier, folks,??he said at one point and promised to slap tariffs on their products.

Corporate interests appear to accept that Clinton won?셳 pursue punitive policies, if their campaign giving is any indication. To a degree not witnessed in modern elections, the Democratic presidential nominee is swamping her GOP rival in contributions from across industry sectors. And her camp has made outreach to business leaders a formal component of her campaign, successfully recruiting a gold-plated roster of executives that typically lean right but have endorsed her in part out of fear of a Trump presidency.

This year, big business is finding that tough love beats the available alternative.

Of late, most of that “other people’s” funding has flowed from one source: Ebers.

From 2011 to 2014, the last year for which records are available, Ebers donated $1.9 million to the Trump Foundation. Those gifts accounted for 58% of the $3.27 million that the charity raised in total during those four years, and 45% of every dollar that it distributed to dozens of philanthropic organizations, as well as for questionable recipients.

In 2014, for example, Ebers’ $539,450 donation equaled 96% of all the newly-raised funds that went into the Foundation’s coffers, and 88% of the dollars it paid out. Over those four years, the foundation’s second largest benefactor was NBC Universal, which gifted $500,000 in 2012, but made no other donations. So Ebers alone gave almost four times as much money as the media colossus runner-up, and ranked first each of the last four years for which IRS filings are available.

Trump hasn’t donated to his eponymous foundation since 2008.

From 2011 to 2014, the Trump Foundation attracted only 12 donors. Just two gave money more than once: Prestige Mills, a wholesale carpeting manufacturer in Long Island City ($34,000 total), and the Charles Evans Foundation in Princeton, NJ, ($100,000). Charles Evans, who started the foundation in 1988 and died in 2007, was the brother who Robert Evans, the Hollywood titan who produced The Godfather, Rosemary’s Baby, and Chinatown. Charles Evans made his own foray into the film world when he bought the rights to the screenplay that became the basis for the 1982 smash hit Tootsie, and later started a real estate investment firm. It’s not clear if Trump was involved in property deals with Evans.

As for Ebers, the public got a single, and hilariously memorable, look at the “Ticket Man” courtesy of a long profile in early 2011. The New York Times story, “Best Seats in the House,” by N. R. Kleinfield, described Ebers as a creature of the telephone who regularly juggles three customer calls who while sitting “at the ticket equivalent of a commodities trading desk flanked by jabbering young men and women.” He affectionately calls people, “Boobie.” The article said Ebers earned in the high six figures, or low seven figures, a year.

At the time, Ebers was chief sales officer for Inside Sports & Entertainment Group, whose business extended far beyond reselling tickets to booking at super-exclusive hotels, obtaining passes at the world’s best golf courses, and getting tables at culinary venues where last-minute reservations are otherwise impossible, as well as organizing meet-and-greets with celebrities, including visits to the set of the HBO series Entourage. The only Yelp review of Inside Sports from 2013 gave it five stars.

In 2014, talent agency CAA purchased Inside Sports and integrated Ebers and his team into its CAA Premium Experience, described in press releases as a “full service event management and marketing practice.”

The Times story vividly portrays a rotund showman nicknamed “Fats” in his youth who’s just as entertaining to be around as the sold-out comedy shows he’s hawking. “I send out an electrifying vibe,” Ebers told the Times reporter while sticking out his arm. “You can touch me, and you wont get shocked.”

According to the Times story, Ebers stated that he sold around $10 million in tickets in 2010, and has 500 or so core clients, among them executives at Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley, as well as wealthy financiers of all stripes who want great seats in a jiffy, the price be damned.

The mystery is why Ebers gives so much money to the Trump Foundation. In effect, he’s letting Trump choose the roster of charities his dollars eventually benefit. Ebers is extremely generous with other causes as well. He’s contributed and helped raise millions of dollars for New York University’s Hospital for Joint Diseases, which recognized his contributions by naming one of its branches the Ebers Center for Foot Deformity. Still, donating an average of almost $500,000 annually to the Trump Foundation, given his means, appears exceedingly philanthropic.

The Ebers and Trump businesses are complementary. Trump owns luxury hotels, including Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, and prestigious golf courses. Ebers, or his team, secure reservations at the best venues, and arrange golfing vacations, for their Wall Street and other wealthy clients. On its website, Inside Sports listed Trump Turnberry, the tycoon’s course in Scotland, as a resort where it can arrange for reservations and tee times.

But whether Trump does major business with Ebers isn’t known, at least so far. Fortune left a message for Ebers at CAA Premium, but has not received a call back. An email to the Trump campaign inquiring about Eber’s friendship and/or business relationship with Trump hasn’t been returned.

We do know that Donald Trump loves larger-than-life characters, a gallery that included crazy-coiffed fight promoter Don King, notorious legal scoundrel Roy Cohn, and toupeed gadfly limousine purveyor-to-the-stars Bill Fugazy. Ebers would fit easily in this collection. Trump has every reason to love Ebers, who rivals the biggest of those stadium-sized personalities.

It’s also reasonable to assume that contributions “cost” Ebers a lot less than they would cost Trump, just as they would most other people. The Donald acknowledges that he pays little in federal taxes, so he wouldn’t benefit much, if at all, from deductions from charitable donations. Ebers, a New Yorker, like most affluent donors probably gets a nice deduction for his contributions.

But tax deductions may not be the only reason. If Trump’s elected, you can imagine Ebers joking with the new president about his deal of a lifetime: selling tickets to the Lincoln bedroom.

President Obama Criticizes Donald Trump Proposals Before United Nations

President Obama used his final address to the United Nations General Assembly to implicitly argue against the immigration and trade policies of Republican nominee Donald Trump.

In a speech Tuesday, Obama criticized politicians on the far left and far right who push ?쏿 crude populism??that ?쐓eeks to restore what they believe was a better, simpler age free of outside contamination.??/p>

Then he appeared to reference Trump?셲 biggest proposal, a wall along the Mexican border.

?쏧 believe that the acceleration of travel and technology and telecommunications, together with a global economy that depends on a global supply chain, makes it self-defeating ultimately for those who seek to reverse this progress,??he said. ?쏷oday, a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself.??/p>

?쏧f we start resorting to trade wars and market-distorting subsidies, beggar-thy-neighbor policies and overreliance on natural resources instead of innovation, these approaches will make us poorer collectively and they are more likely to lead to conflict,??Obama said.

Instead, Obama outlined a broad agenda of strengthening labor unions, spending on early childhood education and infrastructure and increasing foreign aid, among other things.

Is Hillary Clinton ?쁂opying??Donald Trump? Photos Don?셳 Lie

Donald Trump’s propensity to brag, exaggerate and some say, flat out lie has been well documented. Just last week, the GOP presidential nominee falsely claimed that Hillary Clinton started the so-called “birther” lie that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. (and therefore isn’t a legitimate president). And then Trump brashly claimed credit for having ended the birther conspiracy — though he did nothing of the sort.

In fact, Trump’s whoppers are such a regular occurrence — PolitFact rated only 15% of Trump’s statements as true or mostly true–that it’s not surprising that this latest statement may have escaped the notice of the press.

Do people notice Hillary is copying my airplane rallies – she puts the plane behind her like I have been doing from the beginning.

George Bush Sr. Was Just Outed as a Clinton Supporter

This coming election day, George H. W. Bush could be casting his ballot for Hillary Clinton.

Though the elder Bush hasn’t publicly endorsed either of the candidates, Kathleen Hartington Kennedy Townsend posted a photo to Facebook that suggests the former Republican president will be voting Democrat this year. The picture shows the two posing together with the caption, “The President told me he’s voting for Hillary!!” When later asked to confirm her comment, Townsend told Politico, “That’s what he said.”

“The vote President Bush will cast as a private citizen in some 50 days will be just that: a private vote cast in some 50 days,” Jim McGrath, a spokesperson for the 41st president, told Fortune. “He is not commenting on the presidential race in the interim.” Additionally, he tweeted that Townsend’s claim had not been verified.

Those reporting how @GeorgeHWBush will vote this year, it's not clear anyone was there to verify KKT. Still checking, keep your powder dry.

The political family has avoided getting involved in the current presidential race since Jeb Bush suspended his campaign. George W. Bush has returned to the political sphere to focus on keeping the Senate in Republican hands, but none of them have endorsed either of the remaining presidential candidates (though some have speculated that Laura Bush may support Clinton), and they did not attend the Republican National Convention to see Donald Trump accept the nomination.

One of Jeb Bush’s advisors, who has worked with the family for decades, has switched her registry from Republican to unaffiliated and plans to vote for Clinton. Though Trump has gained additional support from his party since accepting the nomination, a handful of prominent Republicans have said they refuse to vote for him.

Donald Trump Gains the Support of a Former ?쁍ever Trump??Billionaire

Donald Trump is reportedly about to receive two of his largest donations to date.

The support is coming from billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam, and TD Ameritrade amtd founder Joe Ricketts. This comes as Hillary Clinton continues to pull in incredible fundraising numbers. Though Trump has seen an impressive amount of support from small donors, he still lags behind his opponent in that regard.

Supporting Trump is a big turnaround for Ricketts. He had previously supported Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s campaign to the tune of millions of dollars. He and his wife were even part of the “Never Trump” movement, donating $6 million to an anti-Trump super PAC. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that he plans to donate around $1 million to a pro-Trump group.

Adelson had previously said that he would donate $100 million to support the Republican nominee, but he has since pulled back. CNN reports that he and his wife plan to spend a total of $45 million to help Republican campaigns, with about $5 million going towards Trump. Though that number is far off from his original pledge, it would still make him the largest donor of this election cycle.

The One Trump Policy That Could Really Damage America

Experts predict Congress will temper or block many of Donald Trump’s proposed policies if elected president, from banning Muslims to making Mexico pay for a new wall. But Trump’s foreign trade policy might carry real weight, according to a new report detailed in the New York Times on Monday.

The findings worry researchers from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), who recently outlined concerns in their study on both Trump and Hillary Clinton’s trade agendas. They believe Clinton would effectively preserve the status quo on America’s trade agreements despite coming out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) this year. Trump, on the other hand, presents a “sharp departure” from the status quo.

The brash, billionaire businessman has harshly criticized both the TPP and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which former president Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993. Trump has also contributed to the outsourcing of millions of manufacturing jobs to the malign of the country’s middle-working class.

“If implemented, those proposals would provoke retaliation by U.S. trading partners,” the report authors said, “unleashing a trade war that would send the U.S. into recession and cost millions of Americans their jobs.”

The authors also criticized Trump’s “musings” about the World Trade Organization. The Republican nominee has previously threatened to withdraw the U.S. from the intergovernmental organization responsible for regulating international trade.

“If, however, the United States withdrew from the WTO,” the authors said, “it could quickly find itself back in the Smoot-Hawley world of the Great Depression.”

The study authors’ criticism was not limited to Trump. They also criticized Clinton’s agreement with Trump on TPP, which the Democratic Party?셲 platform committee rejected.

“If TPP does not come to a vote in the lame duck session, some observers have speculated that President Clinton could flip-flop and return to the pro-TPP position she held as secretary of state,” the authors wrote.

Jill Stein: Donald Trump May Have a ?쁌emory Problem??/h1>

The Green Party presidential candidate, who is a Harvard-educated physician, said that the Republican White House hopeful may have a “memory problem” during an interview with Politico.

“You know, I don’t pretend to be able to do TV diagnosis, but I think the guy has a problem,” she answered when asked if she agreed with Trump physician Dr. Harold Bornstein’s widely-mocked claim that the real estate mogul would be “the healthiest individual ever elected” to the presidency. “The guy has a lot of problems?봯hysical, mental, emotional, cognitive.”

Stein pointed to a number of inconsistent positions that Trump has held over the course of the last decade?봞nd even during the 2016 presidential contest itself?봮n issue like immigration and the Iraq war. In one of the biggest flip flops of the campaign to date, Trump finally admitted last week that President Barack Obama was born in the United States despite the fact that Trump himself had largely made his political name by being one of the “birther” movement’s most ardent and vocal champions.

“It?셲 hard to, you know, to think too hard about anything Donald Trump says because he will change his mind in the next hour, if not the next day, or whatever,” said Stein, suggesting that Trump’s mercurial policy positions may be more a sign of a mental issue than of political eccentricity.

“Today, suddenly, after five years, he became convinced [the birth certificate is] not an issue. Yesterday it was an issue. It will probably become an issue again for him. You know, the guy may have a memory problem. Who knows what it is? But he?셲 incapable of having a consistent thought or policy,” she added.

A number of psychiatrists and psychologists have somewhat controversially suggested that Trump may suffer from a number of conditions ranging from narcissistic personality disorder to sociopathy. Such speculation has never been verified in actual medical documents, and Trump did not address his mental acuity in the medical summary he unveiled on celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz’s show last week.

Hillary Clinton also disclosed new information about her health last week in a bid to reassure voters about her fitness after a pneumonia diagnosis temporarily knocked her off the campaign trail.

Stein and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson failed to make the cut for the first presidential debate schedule later this month.

The protection started Monday and was first reported by NBC News. A Secret Service spokesperson confirmed to TIME that Ivanka is the first of Trump?셲 children to get protection, but referred questions about why the protection was granted to the Trump campaign.

The Secret Service declined to reveal Ivanka?셲 code name, though candidates and their family members usually have code names that begin with the same letter; Trump?셲 code name set is ??a href="http://www.people.com/article/donald-trump-secret-service-code-name-mogul" target="_blank">Mogul.??/p>

Donald Trump started receiving Secret Service protection during the 2016 primary contest.

Secret Service protection for presidential and vice presidential candidates dates back to 1968. After Robert Kennedy was assassinated, protection for candidates and their spouses became standard practice.